Abstract

If I had read Ted Nannicelli’s (2020) thoughtful and wide-ranging book before writing my own, I would not have written the same book that I did, and my book almost certainly would have been better for it. Ted Nannicelli’s 2020 book has many keen insights, and I learnt much from reading it.There is a great deal of overlap in our philosophical interests as well as in our views. Our books were written at the same time—at least, our writing times overlapped significantly—and by the time Nannicelli's was published, mine was already finalized, and it was too late for me to incorporate his insights into my own book. So I welcome the opportunity, however belated, to think carefully about Nannicelli’s ideas in conversation with my own.The first and most important thing to emphasize is my agreement with Nannicelli on many significant matters. Both Nannicelli and I are critical of the overwhelming focus in the ethical criticism of art on what Nannicelli calls ‘perspectivism’, the view that works of art should be judged morally on the basis of the perspective they take up (or attitude they prescribe, or similar). We are also both sceptical about the strength of the arguments concerning the moral-cognitive benefits of art. Both of us think that we need a more expansive toolkit for thinking about art and morality, including attention to the circumstances under which an artwork is produced. (The latter is something that I discuss only briefly, but Nannicelli is right that it is deserving of more careful attention.) Both of us are neutral about specific normative ethical theories. Nannicelli and I are both worried about the problem of relativism and how that affects how we think about moral judgements of artworks. And I think Nannicelli shares my scepticism about the search for easy answers to hard moral questions about the value of art.